Obsession - for a bargain!

My new obsession is officially the last of the Lieberson Neruda Songs. Although I'm usually good at spotting an iTunes bargain, I now realize that iTunes only charges $4.99 for this whole album (5 songs, about 30 minutes in length). I paid something like $13.99 for the disc, but I don't regret it at all. I'm still getting to know them, but the last song, Amor, mio, certainly qualifies as an obsession for me right now. The poignancy of the music, words, and biography for composer and singer is almost unbearable. It's hard to tell how much of my reaction is affected by the story, but it doesn't really matter. I'm still working out what I think of the rest of the cycle and don't know the poetry well enough to comment.

I know I'm far from the first to succumb to this music which has already acquired legendary status. But, for any students out there reading this who haven't heard of the songs and who don't listen to enough music, pay the 99 cents for the last song at a minimum. You'll probably go back for the others.

As Geoff Edgers noted a few months back, for some inexplicable reason iTunes lists this recording as having "clean lyrics" as if there were some other version, but that's just a typical iTunes glitch, something quite common with their classical selections. They still have up Glenn Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations posted in a version that's only available "by the track"; to buy the whole 45-minute performance would cost you $32! They've since added another version of that recording which can be bought as an album for $11.99, but why the former is still there is a mystery.